iPhone 5 jailbreak goes public

There had been plenty of instances of prior iPhone jailbreaks happening, but to this point, the iPhone 5 had proven particularly challenging for hackers.

However, that all changed Monday when a group known as the Evad3rs team finally released an untethered jailbreak for iOS 6 devices, including the iPhone 5, downloadable by anyone with a computer.

The Evasi0n jailbreak allows users to run and download apps not approved by Apple right alongside the regular and certified downloads already on the device.

Flood gates opened

With so many users eagerly anticipating a way to jailbreak their iPhones and iPads, Evad3r's servers were pushed to the limits as soon as Evasi0n went live.

While the number of visitors currently on the group's website wasn't necessarily indicative of the number of downloads, according to one of Evasi0n's developers, some 270,000 users were active when the download went live.

Shortly after, another of the Evad3r devs tweeted downloaders had burned through 1TB of data on a hosting server in just ten minutes.

Based on the file size of Evasi0n, the dev estimated the file had been downloaded more than 100,000 times in that time frame.

A few hours later, that same developer revealed the downloads had surpassed 4.2TB on the same server, which put the number of downloads close to 500,000.

Five feet high and rising

With more and more users downloading the jailbreak, and others getting temporarily shut out due to the immense amount of downloads, there's no telling where the number will peak at the end of Evasi0n's first day.

The current pace of 500,000 downloads every two hours is pretty astronomical, and isn't likely sustainable for long duration.

That said, according to alternative app store Cydia, where many of Evasi0n's new users will flock for unregulated apps, there are nearly 23 million devices currently hooked into the store.

Now that devices like the iPhone 5, iPad 4, and iPhone 4S can access Cydia, that ecosystem is likely to grow quite a bit in the coming days.